David Cameron U-turn on EU migrant children

The U.K. will work with the U.N. refugee agency and NGOs to resettle unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Europe, the government announced Wednesday.

The announcement comes after a plan put forward by Labour peer Alf Dubs to bring 3,000 child refugees to Britain was blocked in parliament last week. Prime Minister David Cameron faced pressure Wednesday from a group of Jewish former refugees who urged him to allow the unaccompanied children to enter the U.K.

“The government is not putting a fixed number on arrivals,” a press release stated, but the offer will “[restrict] resettlement to children registered before the EU migration agreement with Turkey came into force on March 20.”

That is to “avoid creating a perverse incentive for families to entrust their children to people-traffickers.”

“We’re already taking child migrants in Europe with a direct family connection to the U.K., and we’ll speed that up,” Cameron told parliament Wednesday. “And I’m also talking to [the charity] Save the Children to see what we can do more, particularly with children who came here before the EU-Turkey deal was signed.”

Scottish National Party MP Angus Robertson said if Cameron’s announcement marked the “beginning of a U-turn” for the government, he welcomed it.

The prime minister also sparred with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over the latter’s previous warm words for Hamas and Hezbollah in one of the most acrimonious Prime Minister’s Questions exchanges between the two leaders.

Corbyn repeatedly refused demands by Cameron that he withdraw comments he made in 2009, saying it would be “my pleasure and my honor to host an event in parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking … And I’ve also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well.”

“Hamas and Hezbollah believe in killing Jews,” Cameron said. “Not just in Israel but around the world.”

On Corbyn, Cameron said: “He may be a friend of the terrorist group Hamas but he’s an enemy of aspiration.”

Corbyn said “anyone that commits racist acts or is anti-Semitic is not a friend of mine” and argued he made the comments while trying to promote a peace process.

The Labour leader said Cameron and the Tories had been “systematically smearing” Labour’s candidate in Thursday’s London mayoral election, Sadiq Khan.

But Cameron continued the attack, saying while politicians “are not responsible for everything someone says when they share a platform with us,” Khan, who is Muslim, had displayed a “pattern of behavior” by appearing with preacher Suliman Gani, who has labeled woman subservient and called for an Islamic state.